Red State Hero

Chapter 60 WATCHING NINEVA BURN

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"Off to Spain in the coming week," thought Lewis. The very idea of the long flight across the Atlantic worried him and he thought to himself, "If I go to Schul (Synagogue), perhaps it will calm me. This evening is the beginning of Yom Kippur," he thought.

At sunset the Cantor will sing Kol Nidre, an ancient melody based upon a medieval Spanish folk song. The text is much older than the melody. It is in Aramaic, the root language of Hebrew, and it always works its magic on Lewis. Even bad Cantors (and there are many of them) can't wreck the Kol Nidre.

But the Cantor at Beth Emanuel was one of the best. He sang in the tradition of Koussevitzky and so after the Service, Lewis walked to his Manhattan apartment under a clear starlit sky. He did stop on the way for coffee and scones. As a Jew he was not allowed this break in the Yom Kippur fast; but he was not that religious, he told himself as he supped the coffee down.

In the morning he was back in Schul without Betty again, listening to the annual recitation of the Book of Jonah.

And as the Rabbi says:

"The Lord tells Jonah to go to the City of Nineveh and warn its people that if they do not stop their evil ways the Lord will destroy the City by fire. But Jonah does not do what the Lord commands him; instead he goes to the Port of Yenbo and hires himself out as a merchant seaman. As soon as the vessel puts out to sea, a great storm comes up and the crew is frightened and prays unto the Lord for protection; but Jonah does not join them, he is down in the hold sound asleep on a hammock. The crew realizes that they are being punished for Jonah's sin and they toss him overboard.

Now we have a man in the sea who is guilty of disobedience to God and a lack of responsibility to his fellow men. Along comes a great shark, probably a basking shark, and it swallows Jonah. "I know, I know," said the Rabbi, "the popular version refers to a whale but in the Hebrew version Jonah is swallowed by dag gadol (a big fish)."
"Inside dag gadol, Jonah prays one of the Bible's most beautiful prayers of repentance:

2:3 "And You threw46 me deep48 into the heart47 of the seas where the currents turned around me and the breakers and waves49 passed over50 upon me.
2:4 "I said that I was banished51 from before Your eyes - yet I will again look with regard towards Your holy Temple.
2:5 "The waters engulfed my soul35; the abyss52 surrounded me; seaweed bound up my head53.
2:6 "I went down9 to the roots54 of the mountains where the bar of the gate55 of the earth confined me forever56. But You caused my life57 to ascend up6 from the pit58, Yahweh, my God17

And he is promptly coughed up on shore. Having learned his lesson he goes to Nineveh and warns the Ninevites and to his amazement they promptly change their ways. The King of Nineveh even removes his royal garments and covers himself with sackcloth and ashes whereupon Jonah decamps to the edge of town and rests under a shady vine that the Lord provideth; but he is not happy and he says to the Lord, "I want to die." When asked "Why?" he replies, " I have been hoping to watch Nineveh burn." Or words to that effect.

Isn't that so much like human nature? Even when the evildoers repent we still want to see them punished, we want to see them punished for our own satisfaction. There is no justice in this. Many young men in our own community are serving long sentences in prison for selling small quantities of marijuana. This is not about rehabilitation or education, this is not about helping the community, this is about revenge and the pleasure we take from it.

I, myself, am guilty of wanting to watch Nineveh burn. With me, it's the Germans. How can hatred be more complete than that which I have felt for the Germans, for the war and the suffering they caused and for what they did to my people; in this, I am like Jonah.

Modern Germans, as a people, have repented and changed their ways-only a few remain from the Nazi era. And I know from my own conversations with Germans that the burden of guilt they carry is a heavy burden; but still I want to see Nineveh (Germany) burn. And yet during the last Yom Kippur I realized that, unlike Jonah, I had to let my hatred go. My hatred wasn't killing Germans, my hatred was killing me.

You know there was once a place in Germany called Weimar where Goethe and Schiller wrote great works of humanitarian literature; Beethoven was around in those days writing symphonies that embraced us all. There's a great lesson in this, it is easy to forget the good and dwell on the bad. It is possible for a great nation with great gifts to mankind to be ruined by an arrogant, deceitful, lying malevolent government. But as for me and the Germans, I believe it is time for forgiveness and reconciliation; I no longer need to WATCH NINEVEH BURN."

Lewis took the Rabbi's words to heart, he felt cleansed; he felt like it was time for
                                                TIKIM OLAM. *

*Repair the world

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